I am still having difficulty with swallowing after neck surgery. Will this go away?In a study of 64 patients, 22 had difficulty swallowing after anterior cervical surgery. The medical term for this is dysphagia. Dysphagia happened immediately after surgery in all of them. In the patients that got better, the dysphagia lasted from three to 365 days. 11 of the 22 patients had long-term difficulty with swallowing.